Abstract

Drug craving has been defined as tendency or compulsion to abuse substances. Coping skills approach provides a systematic way assessing the full range of antecedents' and consequences of abusing drug that influence an individual's craving potential and devising interventions to deal with them that are likely to reduce the probability of future relapse. Aim to enhancing coping skills to reduce drug craving among addicts. Study design: a quasiexperimental design was utilized to conduct this study. Setting: this study was conducted in the Heliopolis psychiatric Hospital. Subject: convenient sample of thirty patients suffered from drug craving at the addiction outpatient clinic, Data collection tools: 1) Socio-demographic interview questionnaire to assess the socio demographic characteristics of study subjects and data related to the previous history of drug abuse and relapse. 2) Drug craving questionnaire that was used to assess variable contributing to craving among drug abuse. 3) Coping Behavior Inventory (CBI) that was used to assess coping skills among drug craving patients. Results: The present study revealed that youth aged between twenty-five to thirty-five years were the most prone to multiple craving factors, the intervention program was successful in improving coping skills with high risk factors of craving. Conclusion: improvement of behavioral and cognitive coping skills with high-risk situation after program implementation. Recommendations: designing continuous health education programs for family caregivers and their patients with craving to teach them how to avoid craving and how to enhance their coping skills. Psychiatric /mental health nurses should have active role in helping patients with drug craving to cope effectively with high risk factors of craving.

Key words: Drug craving, High risk factors, Coping.